Refugee scholars at Duke
University
.
--by William E. King (University Archives)
[Editor's Note: This essay was published in 1996 in a book entitled They Fled
Hitler's Germany and Found Refuge in North Carolina.]
The volume in the records of President William P. Few is marked "Strictly
Confidential." It is dated 1936 and titled List of Displaced German Scholars. In
content, it consists of more than 1,600 of the briefest of biographical sketches of
victims of political persecution in Germany. Specifically the purpose of the
compilation was to assist in finding employment for "Jewish scholars; scholars
with Jewish antecedents or those connected with Jews by marriage; and nonJewish scholars whose convictions made them unacceptable to the German
Government."
Arranged by academic discipline, one can easily identify 102 psychologists, 104
sociologists or 197 theologians. The list seems to go on and on including the now
familiar names of Einstein, Lewin, Barth and Tillich. Each listing represents the
uprooting of family and the interruption of teaching and research. Both men and
women and established and promising scholars are included.
At least five individuals employed by Duke University are listed in the volume.
That Duke would employ so many émigrés is perhaps surprising. Despite obvious
academic advantages and humanitarian appeal, the employment of the European
émigrés was sometimes controversial and difficult to implement. The organizers
of the placement services were concerned about anti-Semitism. Religious
prejudice, however, was often less a problem than anti-foreign attitudes which
were most often rooted in the hard economic reality of the times. The 1930s were
the time of the Great Depression and as salaries were cut and research funds lost,
native-born academicians sometimes resented limited funds going to foreign
refugees. Prestigious Harvard University was conspicuously slow to join the effort
to add German émigrés to its faculty. The South, as a region, was the slowest area
to offer assistance.
The eleven states of the old Confederacy were still so poor the region was labeled
by President Franklin D. Roosevelt as the nation's number one economic problem.
The rebirth or second era of the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s and 1930s fed off of
poverty and cultivated anti-foreign and anti-Semitic attitudes. The South's mixture
of widely dispersed state-supported universities and teachers' colleges and
numerous independent private colleges and universities did not lend itself to quick
participation in a national effort of any kind. When the Emergency Committee in
Aid of Displaced German Scholars organized in 1933, it named only one
southerner, Chancellor James H. Kirkland of Vanderbilt University, to its twentytwo member general committee of support. The final report of the Emergency
Committee in 1945 lists the successful placement of 613 scholars. A partial listing
by state reflects the relative emphasis of the efforts of the Committee: 111 in New
York state, 27 each in Massachusetts and Pennsylvania, 26 in Illinois, 10 in
Maryland, 7 in North Carolina, 4 in Tennessee and Virginia, and 1 in Louisiana.
The policy of employing German scholars distinguished Duke University
compared to other institutions in the region. When the assistant secretary of the
Emergency Committee, Edward R. Murrow, sent a mass appeal to college and
university presidents on November 2, 1933, President William P. Few replied the
next day: "I should be very glad to have. . .a list of available men for
consideration." By November 27, Few submitted seven names in order of
preference for scholars in psychology, zoology, history, chemistry or physics, law,
language and sociology.
Obviously desiring to be of quick assistance in such perilous times for refugee
scholars, President Few also was grateful for assistance in building the faculty for
the relatively new Duke University. Founded in 1838 as Union Institute in
Randolph County, the institution became Trinity College before relocating to
Durham in 1892 through the primary support of tobacco entrepreneur,
Washington Duke. Duke's son, James B. Duke, a business genius with spectacular
success in both tobacco and electric power, greatly expanded the family's
commitment to serving the region in 1924 with the creation of the Duke
Endowment, a philanthropic organization empowered to aid hospitals,
orphanages, and selected institutions of higher education in the two Carolinas and
the rural Methodist Church in North Carolina.
James B. Duke's generosity permitted the expansion of Trinity College into a
university, and with an additional gift for construction of a new campus, President
Few persuaded Duke to permit the expanded, reorganized institution to be named
Duke University. Within six years the school was transformed by the construction
of two new campuses. A Georgian style campus became the undergraduate
college for women, and a Gothic style campus became the site of the expansion of
an undergraduate school for men, an engineering school, law school, and graduate
school, as well as the site for the addition of new schools in religion, medicine,
nursing and forestry. During the decade of the 1930s undergraduate enrollment
increased 50 per cent, graduate enrollment 87 per cent, and faculty 34 per cent.
The institution profited enormously by the unparalleled opportunity presented by
James B, Duke's largesse at a time of economic depression.
In such flush times, however, President Few, early on and alone, concluded that
perhaps the school had expanded too rapidly. The opportunity presented by the
Emergency Committee offered decided advantages and fortuitously fit Few and
the university's needs. Distinguished scholars were available to help in the staffing
of new or expanded academic programs. And they were available at no expense,
for the New York committee and the Rockefeller Foundation shared in paying all
of the émigrés' salaries. Initially no long-term commitment was required of the
employing institution. But as events worsened in Europe and the small number of
academic refugees swelled dramatically, the Emergency Committee enacted a
more restrictive policy. Financial assistance came to be granted for a limited term
of three years and then only if the employing institution guaranteed the émigré
scholar a permanent position or tenure. This change in policy, however, scarcely
gave Few pause because he favored established scholars to bring prestige to the
growing graduate and professional schools and he still had time to plan for
assuming their total expense.
It is not surprising that Few's first choice for Duke in his initial list for the
Emergency Committee was the renowned psychologist William Stern. The Duke
psychology department was unusually strong with its chairman William
McDougall, a native of England who came to Duke by way of Cambridge, Oxford
and Harvard, generally acknowledged as one of the top ten psychologists in the
world. It is clear that McDougall wanted his German contemporary, Stern, to join
a department that consisted of a Swede, Helge Lundholm, and two Harvard- and
Berlin-trained Americans, Karl Zener and Don Adams.
Murrow replied immediately to Few's request saying that Stern had not yet been
placed, that he could be reached in Amsterdam, Holland, and that the employing
institution had to initiate contact with the prospective faculty member. Upon
confirmation that the Emergency Committee and the Rockefeller Foundation
would share Stern's salary of $6,000, Few promptly wrote Stern. McDougall
wrote two letters of welcome, sending one to Holland and one to the New York
office of the placement committee in case Stern was already en route.
A confidential addition to the letter from the Emergency Committee to Few
described the scholar joining the psychology department. "Stern is," it read, "about
62 years of age, alert, almost boyish in his manner and enthusiasm. His wife is
charming and gracious, a woman who has in her own right a first class reputation
as a psychologist. They understand English and speak it well enough for
conversational purposes, but unfortunately Stern is quite certain that he will lack
freedom of intellectual formulation in the English language and must therefore be
allowed to lecture in German." The description fit the Sterns perfectly. The couple
brought a European gentility to the campus and community that was greatly
appreciated, especially by graduate students who were entertained in their house
with cakes and ale. One student remembers Stern as enjoying records, especially
Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, because he had sung the choral portion.
Stern's expertise in child psychology complemented the Duke department well.
Since he taught in German his courses were small, usually averaging fewer than
ten graduate students. Often he explained devices he had developed, such as a
puzzle box for testing children or a series of pictures of cloud shapes designed to
elicit spontaneous remarks from children. Few once reported that at the end of a
public lecture Stern received a great ovation and the presentation of flowers.
Everyone was pleased, and Stern's employment was renewed annually. But
tragically in April, 1938, Stern died suddenly one Sunday morning. Few reported
that the whole community had become attached to Stern and was deeply
distressed. Funeral rites, conducted by Rabbi Bernard Zigler of Chapel Hill and
Professor Alban Widgery of the Duke philosophy department, were held in the
Duke chapel.
Walter Kempner arrived in the Duke Medical Center in 1934 through the personal
assistance of Frederic M. Hanes, Chairman of the Department of Medicine.
Kempner was the son of medical doctors; his mother, whose specialty was
bacteriology, is credited as being the first female professor in Prussia. Thirty-one
years of age upon his arrival at Duke, Kempner had earned his medical degree at
the University of Heidelberg before being associated with the University of
Berlin's medical clinic. As associate in medicine and physiology, his research
eventually established the reversibility of major disease processes through dietary
control. The public knows Kempner as the originator of the "rice diet" which
established Durham's reputation as a diet center. Dr. Kempner is still (in 1995)
living in Durham.
Herbert von Beckerath arrived in 1935 to assume the unique position of a joint
appointment at Duke and the University of North Carolina. Initial contact with
von Beckerath was made by Howard Odum, Director of the Institute for Research
in Social Science at UNC. The correspondence of President Frank Porter Graham
of UNC, reveals that Odum forwarded him outstanding recommendations for von
Beckerath, noted a favorable personal impression from published articles and a
personal interview, and explained that despite von Beckerath's background in
jurisprudence, economics and political science, Odum believed the best students
in sociology would profit considerably from his courses in broad-based theory as
it is our desire "to get away from narrow disciplinary lines." Apparently financial
constraints intruded in the hiring process, for at the last moment when the
Rockefeller Foundation agreed to support one-half of his salary, Duke was invited
to share one quarter along with Carolina. In 1938 von Beckerath became
permanently associated with Duke where he taught graduate level courses in
economics and political science until he retired in 1955.
When he arrived Herbert von Beckerath was forty-nine years old and an
acknowledged authority on money market theory and industrial policy and
organization. Protestant in religion and educated at the universities of Freiburg,
Berlin and Bonn, he took leave from the University of Bonn in protest to growing
Nazi authority. It was a leave a colleague said was for the right reasons and one
von Beckerath "would be glad to extend." He had traveled widely, spoke several
languages fluently, and had published in German and English. Durham colleagues
described him as upper class, urbane, quiet, and an excellent conversationalist
although he avoided politics in discussion. He had an aristocratic background,
being from one of the oldest, most successful Rhineland families which had been
quite wealthy before losing everything during World War I and its aftermath. Von
Beckerath came to North Carolina by way of a one-year appointment at Bowdoin
College in Maine. He married Guelda Elliott of Chapel Hill in 1937. After her
death in 1966 he began a journey to return to his homeland. Sadly, while en route
he died in his sleep in a hotel room in Washington, D. C.
Staffing the Physics department proved troublesome to President Few in the
transition from college to university. Oftentimes he built successful programs
around a "star" appointment like William McDougall in Psychology, Charles
Ellwood in Sociology, and even Wallace Wade in football. Several attempts to
lure "stars" in physics failed, however, until the Emergency Committee assisted in
the employment of Hertha Sponer in 1936. Then forty-one years old, she was
acknowledged as one of the two most outstanding women physicists in the world.
A specialist in molecular spectroscopy she had just published an acclaimed twovolume work, Molecular Spectra and Their Application to Chemical Problems.
Highly respected and non-Jewish, she nevertheless wondered about her career
given the common belief that Nazi authorities frowned upon women in academic
posts. A student believed she left Germany out of sympathy for persecuted
academicians and in fear of another war. She came to Duke by way of the
University of Oslo. In welcoming a woman Few ignored the advice of Robert A.
Millikin of the California Institute of Technology that he would get more for his
money if he picked a younger man rather than any woman.
If perchance Few thought he was employing someone who would interact mainly
with women undergraduates, he soon discovered otherwise. Sponer was a very
serious scientist focused on research, publication, and professional lectures and
meetings. Initially her highly specialized upper level courses averaged only four
students. In 1946 at age fifty-one she married her former professor in Germany,
James Franck. Franck, a Nobel Prize laureate in physics, had emigrated to the
United States in 1935. Although Franck never taught at Duke and commuted
between Chicago and Durham for awhile, they were a delightful couple to have in
the academic community. She also attracted attention locally by raising world
champion Doberman Pinschers. Noting how well cared for her dogs were, she
once commented that she wished to be her own dog in reincarnation. James
Franck died in 1965. Hertha Sponer-Franck retired in 1965 and died in 1968 in
Germany, where she had gone to live with relatives.
In April, 1937, Few wrote the Emergency Committee seeking help in securing a
theoretical physicist. The committee notified him that Lothar Wolfgang Nordheim
was a visiting professor at Purdue University on temporary assignment and that he
could switch to Duke if he received a permanent position. Nordheim transferred to
Duke for the academic year 1937-38 with some confusion over a permanent
position and whether his first year at Purdue counted as part of a three year
appointment with shared salary. Not wishing to alienate the Emergency
Committee, Few ended the negotiations with a clearly stated appreciation for the
Emergency Committee's cooperation in "the protection of scientists and scholars
and the protection of science and learning." He commented that he believed
Nordheim to be an excellent man who would make a significant contribution in
his field.
Born in Munich in 1899, the son of a Jewish medical doctor, Nordheim served
briefly in World War I before studying at the universities of Hamburg, Munich,
and Gottingen. His research was in quantum mechanics, particularly electron
emission and conductivity in metals. When he was dismissed from his German
university position in 1933, James Franck helped him obtain temporary positions
in France and the Netherlands. In an interview with a student reporter at Duke,
Nordheim commented that World War I was thought of as a chemist's war while
World War II was a physicist's war. He did his part in the Allied war effort by
joining the top secret Manhattan Project in Chicago before becoming director of
the physics division of the Oak Ridge laboratories. A man of proven
administrative ability, he frequently alternated between the Duke campus and
laboratories at Oak Ridge and Los Alamos, New Mexico, during and after World
War II. In 1956 he joined the General Atomic Division of General Dynamics
Corporation in San Diego, California.
Nordheim's wife, Gertrude, was also a Ph. D. in physics. Although she did not
teach at Duke she became popular among graduate students by helping them with
experiments. She died tragically in a bicycle accident in 1949 during a postwar
visit to her hometown in Germany. Lothar Nordheim's sister came to live with
him and helped to raise his son. A dedicated scientist-administrator, Nordheim did
not avoid debate on the need for information versus secrecy during the Cold War
or on the developing role of atomic energy in the postwar world. He participated
in Duke-UNC colloquia, campus forums, statewide speaking tours and Unitarian
discussion groups. He also did not hesitate to sign public policy releases by the
scientific community from time to time.
In 1938 the last of the German émigrés who spent the remainder of their lives at
Duke arrived in Durham. In Fritz London, Duke found the long sought "star" in
science, and in reality perhaps one of the brightest stars in the history of the
faculty of the university. A modest autobiographical statement in the news bureau
clipping file begins as follows: "I was born the 7th of March 1900 in Breslau as a
son of Franz London, Professor of Mathematics at the University of Breslau and
graduated (Dr. phil.) summa cum laude in 1921 at the University of Munich. I
served at the University of Stuttgart and Berlin in the departments of theoretical
Physics. . . . I held a Rockefeller Fellowship with Prof. Schroedinger in Zurich
1927 and with Prof. Fermi in Rome 1931. In the summer 1933 I lost my position
at the University of Berlin in consequence of the laws which exclude persons of
Jewish origin from state appointments."
Fritz London was in Paris when Paul M. Gross, Chairman of the Department of
Chemistry at Duke, approached him about coming to Durham. He was not
employed with any assistance of the Emergency Committee. Reluctant to leave
Europe, he came first as a visiting professor before accepting a permanent
position. Describing Fritz London's work and contributions is difficult, and often
one finds the simple statement "he thinks for a living" quoted by journalists.
Known for theories in chemistry and physics, London was a pioneer in modern
quantum chemistry, in understanding atomic and molecular structures, and in
super conductivity in low temperature physics. As an academician he was
absorbed in his work, intense, precise, and an intuitive thinker who usually arrived
at a solution first and then worked at proving it. Colleagues remember asking him
if he had had a good vacation and getting the reply, "I had a great vacation. I got
some good ideas." He worked alone with limited association with graduate
students or colleagues. Yet upon the discovery of a solution to a problem a friend
said he changed to where sharing the joy of his discovery took over and his
enthusiasm became contagious. Personally he was considerate with a delightful
sense of humor, and he was an excellent conversationalist. He had close friends at
Duke, UNC, and in Durham with whom he enjoyed music and family. His wife
Edith, an accomplished artist, and their two children broadened his circle of
friends. Fritz London died prematurely at age 54 in 1954.
Today one hears on campus that had London lived he would have won the Nobel
Prize for physics. Some may question whether that is institutional pride, but
London's receipt of the prestigious Lorentz Medal for scientific achievement,
awarded by the Royal Netherlands Academy of Science, validates his being in the
tradition of Nobel prize winners. Perhaps a biography by Professor Gavroglu
which is being released this spring by Cambridge University Press will add more
to that aspect of London's life. London in remembered at Duke today with a
seminar room named after him and through an award and lecture. The Fritz
London Memorial Lecture, begun through joint efforts of the Sigma Xi chapters at
Duke and UNC, has brought seventeen Nobel laureates to the Triangle area since
Lothar Nordheim gave the first lecture in 1956. In 1973, John Bardeen, a two-time
Nobel Prize winner, established an endowment to underwrite the lecture series and
initiate a Fritz London Award in low temperature physics. Bardeen acknowledged
that his second award, which was for work in superconductivity, was inspired by
London's pioneering in the field a generation earlier.
Altogether, then, in the 1930s Duke employed six émigré scholars, four through
the assistance of the Emergency Committee. One other, Raphael Lemkin, taught
briefly in the Law School in the early 1940s. A Polish-born lawyer, Lemkin was
responsible for the United Nations' outlawing of genocide, a term he introduced
and defined as meaning "the purposeful destruction of nations, races or groups."
One must be thankful that Duke acted so quickly to employ so many displaced
scholars. It is instructive to identify them and note the contributions they and their
families made to the university, community, and world of scholarship. Yet it is
impossible to understand the very personal experience of having to leave one's
homeland under such trying circumstances. A final illustration of another émigré
who frequently visited the Duke campus perhaps helps convey the sense of loss
and beginning anew experienced by the displaced scholars. The theologian Paul
Tillich first visited Duke when the Sarah P. Duke Gardens were taking on their
present shape in the late 1930s. He was taken to see them as was common for any
visitor of the time. But he strongly identified with the Gardens in being himself
uprooted and planted in a new land and culture. Every time he returned to Duke
through the years he asked to have time to revisit the gardens, visits reported by
Tommy Langford, former Dean of the Divinity School and University Provost,
that seemed to be an almost mystical experience. Tillich seemed to be lost in
thought remembering his past and identifying with the growth and maturing of the
landscape as it changed through the years. One almost felt like an intruder
accompanying him on his visits, says Langford. Today one has somewhat that
same sense of intruding in the lives of the émigré scholars in recounting their
forced journey to live among us. But it is a significant story worthy of being part
of the historical record nevertheless.